The Electors are actual human beings, not an abstract formality. The Electors are pledged to vote a certain way. But they are not legally or constitutionally bound to honor their pledge. So an actual Electoral College vote is necessary to officially choose the president.

In 2016, Trump won the Electoral vote by 306-232 based on the popular voting. But in the Electoral College election in December, seven electors voted for people other than those they were pledged to, with Trump losing two votes and Clinton losing five, leaving a final tally 304-227 for Trump. The defections went to John Kasich [1], Ron Paul [1], Bernie Sanders [1], Colin Powell [3], and Faith Spotted Eagle [1].

Keep in mind that the popular vote is not binding. The state legislatures are constitutionally charged with the responsibility to choose the Electors. All state legislatures have chosen to have Electors allocated by popular vote. But the legislatures can and must step in to override the popular vote should there be a problem. After all, Article II of the constitution states that “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature there of may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress”

A state’s legislature can pick the Electors without any direct input from voters. This is fine, given that the legislators are themselves elected.

Quite the opposite. I’m not suggesting tyranny is right around the corner in America. I’m saying that Political Correctness is a guidepost pointing down the road that leads to that outcome.

Politics doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Politics, and thus government and law, follows the culture. A culture is defined by the ideas that predominate among its people. Free people who fail to acknowledge the role of ideas in shaping the kind of government they get are impotent to defend against anti-liberty ideas, thus missing the warning signs threatening their freedom, and end up by helplessly asking “How could this happen?”

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There are many bad signs beside Political Correctness” threatening free speech. Campaign finance “reform”; agitation for “hate speech” laws; the attempts at government control of internet content in the name of “net neutrality” or “fighting fake news”; prosecution of “climate deniers”; the growing tendency toward “safe spaces” and the like on college campuses—all of these are warning signs.

No dictatorship can consolidate its power or remain for long without crushing intellectual freedom. Threats to intellectual freedom are definitely the path to totalitarianism. Any threat to free speech and expression must be challenged in the strongest possible terms.

Monday, February 12, 2018

The War on Pipelines is part of the Environmentalist’s War on Fossil Fuels (itself part of the War on Reliable Energy, including nuclear power). A key object of this assault is fracked oil and gas. Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, the miraculous process which has opened up vast new fossil fuel resources. Environmentalists view pipelines as a means of transporting fracked fossil fuels. So they’ve been waging their War on Pipelines under the logic that if you can’t transport fracked fuels, fracking can be restrained.

But where pipelines are lacking, producers have simply found other ways to transport their product—ways that are often less efficient and, more importantly, less safe. Not to be dissuaded, anti-fossil activists have launched a campaign to stop tanker trains from transporting fracked oil on the grounds that the bridges they cross are not safe. In Bridges used to carry combustible crude oil need repairs, activists say, Sara Jerde reported:

Combustible Bakken oil is too dangerous to be transported along Bergen County's aging bridges and rail ways, activists and environmentalists protested on Sunday.

Despite assurances from CSX, the railroad company, that bridges are regularly monitored and upgraded as necessary,

Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, pointed to the potential of dangerous incidents, such as in Quebec, where a derailment of a train carrying oil -- dubbed a "bomb train" -- resulted in 47 people dying.

"Bakken oil is one of the most dangerous form of chemicals we can put on the rail lines," he said. "We're playing Russian roulette that can, one day, lead to a catastrophic tragedy."

This is the same Sierra Club that can regularly be observed leading anti-pipeline protests. If Tittel really cared about safety, wouldn’t he see that the answer to the dangers of transporting oil by rail is pipelines?

This is a good argument for pipelines. As the Star-Ledger has noted, pipelines are a much safer way to transport oil. The trouble is, these anti-rail activists are the same activists who oppose pipelines on principle, including the proposed Pilgrim Pipeline which could alleviate the need to transport Bakken oil by rail and truck.

These activists are not primarily concerned with safety. They’re concerned with shutting down reliable, affordable energy production, the lifeblood of our industry and our standard of living. Their main target is fossil fuels, but also nuclear. Why? Because environmentalists are driven by the principle of minimizing human impact on raw nature, rather than maximizing human well-being by promoting reliable energy development while minimizing the impacts of the negative side-effects of industrialization. Put in simple terms, they’re not about solving problems. They’re about “throwing out the baby with the bath water.”

These activists have no credibility. They never recognize the enormous benefits that fossil fuels provide for humans. They shout “STOP, STOP, STOP” at every progressive energy project, if the energy is produced from fossil fuels. Rather than help figure out the safest way possible based on current technology to move the Bakken Oil, the result of the incredibly progressive technology of fracking, they oppose, oppose, oppose—without due respect for the benefits. (Never mind so-called “renewable” green energy. Every kilowatt of solar and wind generation needs backup from fossil, nuclear, and hydro sources. With today’s technology, no matter how many solar panels or wind turbines are built, we’ll still need the oil. We’ll need it, that is, from the perspective of human well-being, not “saving our planet,” as the moral standard of value.)

The activists may have a point about the safety of the bridges. But why should anyone believe them? They logically should be demanding approval for the much safer pipeline method. They’re not. How do we know that the bridge safety issue isn’t just another cover for their war on fossil fuels (They’ve just embraced a new strategy to halt pipelines—defending property owners again eminent domaine. But the pipeline opponents have a double standard, as I’ve pointed out, defending private property against taking when it suits their agenda, and supporting the taking when it when it does)? Will any infrastructure improvements ever be enough to satisfy Jeff Tittel and his ilk that “the potential of dangerous incidents” has been minimized enough to be able to say that the benefits outweigh the risks? I doubt it. But remember; no risk means no progress and no industrial civilization.

The idea that there are “set standards of political correctness,” and that speaking one’s mind in defiance of those alleged standards is to “get away” with something, is an indication of the growing threat to free speech. Political correctness is a form of self-censorship, a precursor to government censorship and the rise of totalitarianism.

Perhaps the question was asked facetiously or as an experiment to gauge the support for this kind of thinking. Whatever the reason, I have to say that the mere fact that this question is even seriously posed is politically frightening, and a bad sign for the future of intellectual freedom. It shows that there are people out there who believe that some people have the right and power to set public speech standards or dictate what ideas others are allowed to express or silence people whom they disagree with. Political Correctness is intended to fraudulently distort meanings and concepts, one-sidedly frame the debate, and destroy the ability to counter bad ideas with better ideas. It is intellectual authoritarianism and I reject it completely.

Trump or anyone else can properly be challenged for what they say, but never that they said it. I suggest the author of the question as well as anyone concerned with preserving their freedom to express themselves pick up a copy of The Tyranny of Silence by Flemming Rose.

Thursday, February 8, 2018

I like Dennis Prager and his Prager U. They have many informative and easy-to-understand videos. I find much convincing and easy to agree with. But this video, Does God Exist? 4 New Arguments, is puzzling. It purports to “prove” the existence of God—but forgets the rules of proof, which starts with providing actual evidence. It even mentions Aristotle—while forgetting Aristotle, the father of modern science.

Frank Pastore poses this question:

Science tells us that the universe came into being via The Big Bang. But how do you get from energy and matter to a self-aware human being? That takes three additional Big Bangs that science can't explain.

Pastore then presents four “Big Bang” arguments for God: the origin of the universe, the rise of life from inanimate matter, the diversity of life on Earth and the igniting of evolution, and the rise of intelligent life (the cosmological, the biological, the anthropological, and the psychological).

What this amounts to is nothing new: There is no evidence whatsoever for the existence of a supernatural God who created existence. Hence, many religionists trot out science’s inability (to date) to explain certain existential phenomena as proof that therefore the only logical explanation for such phenomena is that God did it.

The idea of proving the existence of God is the ultimate contradiction. The Christian God is believed to exist outside of nature; that is, in a supernatural realm. He is thought to be unknowable through mere reason. Man’s reason is “limited.” If that is so, then proof of God is logically impossible, for if God’s existence can be proved, it would by definition disprove the very existence of God, as conceived by Christianity. It would mean God is knowable and subject to the same laws of nature that everything existing in nature is subject to. He would not exist in a realm above nature—a supernatural realm. “Supernatural” implies beyond the laws of nature, and thus unprovable by definition.

The four “Big Bangs” may be arguments for God. Anybody can argue anything for any reason. But they don’t constitute proof. So, what’s the point? Pastore concludes, We must take God on faith—or, the only rational explanation for existence is faith in God!.

Religionists should give up trying to appeal to rationality in a vain attempt to prove the irrational—the existence of God. This video boils down to the argument from ignorance: we don’t know something yet, so God must have done it. But ignorance—we don’t know yet—does not prove God. It simply proves we don’t know everything yet (and probably never will). The four “Big Bangs” of “proof” in this video fail to prove anything but that there is more for science to discover and explain. Religionists could stick to faith if they want to. But forget proving God. The argument from ignorance is not an argument for God, new or otherwise.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

I've never bought into the "Give Back" campaign. It's a sinister attempt by parasites and achievement-haters to guilt people into giving up their hard earned money and/or valuable time in "atonement" for making their lives the best they can be. There's nothing wrong with voluntarism, of course. But charitable activity is not a moral duty. It should be an act of good will toward something one believes in, not an unearned guilt-induced duty to "give back" what you haven't taken. The success you earned, no matter what the level of success, comes from providing a value to people willing to pay you for it. You've already given through the act of making money. You haven't taken anything.

The Electoral College is part of the checks and balances put into place to prevent the rise of tyranny by preventing the concentration of political power—that is, the power of physical coercion—in any one branch or segment of government. The Founders not only feared Kings but also majoritarian or factional tyranny. The Founders studied history. One of the things they found was that democracies historically have given rise to factionalism, which inevitably leads to dominance by the most powerful electoral factions over weaker factions, manifested through elected legislatures or demagogic leaders, and ultimate conflict and collapse.

Electorates can be dominated by emotional, short-term, often irrational mob-like passions. The Founders understood that the extreme passions of the electorate must be taken into consideration, but also needed to be tamed. Consider Congress. State legislatures were assigned the task of selecting the Senators, who had six-year terms (since switched, unfortunately, to popular vote by the 17th Amendment) to give state governments ample voice in Federal legislation (which, because of the 17th Amendment, is no longer the case). They created the House of Representatives, selected by direct popular elections every two years, for the purpose of giving voice to populism.

The Electoral College must be considered within this context. Given the enormous power of the single person who is president, the Framers created the electoral college as a bulwark against the public passions in filling that post. Hence, the state legislatures are responsible for choosing the electors. (Remember that state legislatures are themselves elected. So the popular vote still ultimately counts with respect to the President, but only indirectly.)

The Founders did not create an absolute, or what I call a fundamentalist, democracy. They created a free republic in which democracy is a constitutionally limited part. This is consistent with the fundamental principle of America. Contrary to the distortions of the so-called Progressives, the fundamental principle of America is the primacy of liberty based on individual rights, not the primacy of the vote. (The term “democracy,” in fact, appears nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. That’s no accident.)

The electoral process was designed so as the give people control over their government but in a way that minimizes the threat to individual liberty rights. To suggest that the Electoral College is outdated is to suggest that the principle of checks and balances, and by extension the primacy of individual liberty rights, is outdated. That’s a scary thought. If anything, the Electoral College, which has worked very well, is even more relevant today. America has grown from 13 states to 50 states plus the District of Columbia. A simple, single national popular vote to decide the presidency would be utterly absurd in a country as big and uniquely diverse as the United States. Rather than a meaningless national popular vote, the Electoral College provides for 51 distinct popular vote contests, which acts both as a check on the power of the federal government over the states and on the undue dominance of large states over smaller states. Democracy only works when individual rights are inalienable and politics is kept closer to the people.

About Me

Greetings and welcome to my blog. My name is Michael A. (Mike) LaFerrara. I sometimes use the pen or "screen" name "Mike Zemack" or "Zemack" in online activism, such as posted comments on articles. “Zemack” stands for the first letters of the names of my six grandchildren. I was born in 1949 in New Jersey, U.S.A., where I retired from a career in the plumbing, building controls, and construction industries, and still reside with my wife of 45 years. The purpose of my blog is the discussion of a wide range of topics relating to human events from the perspective of Objectivism, the philosophy of reason, rational self-interest, and Americanism originated by Ayn Rand.

As Rand observed: “The professional intellectual is the field agent of the army whose commander-in-chief is the philosopher.” I am certainly not the philosopher. But neither am I a field agent, or general. I am a foot soldier in that Objectivist army that fights for an individualist society in which every person can live in dignified sovereignty, by his own reasoned judgment, for his own sake, in that state of peaceful coexistence with his fellow man that only capitalist political and economic freedom can provide. While I am a fully committed Objectivist, my opinions are based on my own understanding of Objectivism, and should not be taken as definitive “Objectivist positions.” For the full story of my journey toward Objectivism, see my Introduction.

One final introductory note: I strongly recommend Philosophy, Who Needs it, which highlights the inescapable importance of philosophy in every individual's life. I can be reached at mal.atlas@comcast.net. Thanks, Mike LaFerrara.

Recommended Essays/Videos

Quotes I Like

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.—Francisco d'Anconia

I love getting older...I get to grow up and learn things. Madalyn, 5 years old, Montesorri student, and my grand-daughter

The best thing one can do for the poor is to not become one of them. Author Unknown

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Francis Bacon

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Ronald Reagan

Thinking is hard work. If it weren't, more people would do it. Henry Ford

Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. Ayn Rand